According to GROK.COM

The x.com domain appeared to be “for sale” on GoDaddy (showing a typical parking page with ads, like couches/sofas, and a “parked free, courtesy of GoDaddy.com” message) for some users in the days immediately surrounding Twitter’s rebrand to X in July 2023—specifically around July 23–24, 2023, when Elon Musk announced the change and began redirecting x.com to twitter.com.

This was not because the domain was actually for sale or owned by a third-party GoDaddy customer. Musk had privately bought x.com back from PayPal in July 2017 (for an undisclosed but likely high sum), and it had been under his/private ownership since then, with the registrar listed as GoDaddy (a change that happened during the 2017 transfer from PayPal’s registrar, MarkMonitor).

The parking page glitch happened due to technical issues during the rushed DNS (Domain Name System) update when the rebrand rollout began:

• On July 23, 2023, Musk tweeted that x.com was redirecting to Twitter, and the site initially showed a simple “X” landing page for many users.
• However, DNS propagation (the time it takes for domain changes to update globally across internet servers) takes hours to days. During this window, some users’ devices/ISPs still saw cached/old records pointing to a default GoDaddy parking/placeholder page (common for domains when no active site is configured or during transitions).
• This wasn’t a sale listing—the domain wasn’t publicly listed for sale on GoDaddy or anywhere else. It was just the registrar’s default holding page appearing inconsistently due to incomplete propagation.
• High-profile people like Jack Dorsey mocked it (tweeting “Y” with a screenshot), and reports from outlets like Business Insider, The Messenger, Futurism, and others captured the chaos, with some users seeing the ads for 7+ hours on July 24.

The issue resolved within a day or so as DNS fully propagated, and x.com properly redirected to Twitter (later becoming the primary domain). The rebrand itself was notoriously hasty and glitchy overall (logo changes, app updates, etc.), contributing to these temporary hiccups.

In short: It was never actually for sale on GoDaddy—Musk owned it outright. The “for sale” appearance was a brief, widespread DNS propagation artifact during the messy July 2023 transition.